Epstein files: DOJ removes thousands of documents that may have had victim information, cites ‘technical or human error'

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Monday that it had removed numthousand documents and “media” files that may have accidentally revealed victim-identifying information after it began releasing a new batch of records related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein on Friday.

The department attributed the release of the sensitive material, which prompted backlash from victims and their lawyers, to errors caused by “technical or human error”, according to AP.

US Attorney Jay Clayton informed the New York judges supervising the sex trafficking cases against Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell that the department had removed nearly all materials flagged by victims or their lawyers, besides a “substantial number” of documents identified independently by the government.

Clayton noted that the department has “iteratively revised its protocols for addressing flagging documents” in response to requests from victims and their attorneys to modify the procedures for assessing and redacting posted records. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told ABC’s “This Week” in a Sunday interview that, although sporadic errors have taken place, the Justice Department has acted quickly to correct them.

Blanche mentioned, “Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectified that. And the numbers we’re talking about, just so the American people understand, we’re talking about .001 percent of all the materials."

The DOJ on Friday released over three million pages of records, more than 2,000 videos, and nearly 180,000 images in the latest batch.

Henderson informed CNN that the letter had been sent to the judges but has not yet been posted on the public court docket. In the filing addressed to Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer, Henderson and Edwards said that over the previous 48 hours they had reported thousands of redaction failures affecting nearly 100 survivors, whose lives they said had been severely disrupted by the Justice Department’s latest document release.

They also told the court that the scope, frequency, and persistence of the failures could not reasonably be attributed to institutional incompetence, especially given that the Justice Department’s only court-ordered and repeatedly emphasised responsibility was to redact known victims’ names before releasing the records.

The lawyers detailed numerous redaction failures they said they uncovered, including one instance in which a minor victim’s name was allegedly “revealed 20 times in a single document". They said that after reporting the errors to the Justice Department, only three were corrected, “leaving 17 instances still unpredicted as of this filing".

They cited additional examples, including an email that allegedly listed 32 underage victims “with only one name redacted and 31 left visible,” as well as FBI “302” forms in which victims’ full first and last names were left unredacted.